You don’t even have to watch them glide ominously through the water above to hear the Jaws music in your head. The volume increases as you walk past the bizarre porcupine pufferfish and the camouflage triggerfish. By the time you’re petting the stingrays and gawking at the snakelike eels, the music is practically blaring in your head. And then, finally, you walk through a fish-flanked tunnel toward a shipwreck and find yourself in the middle of a 1.3 million gallon tank, home to 43 sharks—bonnetheads, blacktip reefs, lemons, sand tigers, and nurse sharks—which turns out to be an experience of pure fascination, not fear. The Shark Reef is the major attraction at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas—a city known more for its sand and slots than sea life—and opened in March of 1999, just a year before the Reef. And if the jellyfish, eels, sharks, and proximity to blackjack tables don’t seem like the makings of a typical aquarium, it’s because the Shark Reef is anything but. Beside, above, and below are elaborate displays of some of the most exotic marine life known to man as visitors walk through transparent walls, floors, and tunnels. Although its purpose—like most other aquariums—is conservation of the species and educating the public, this facility is self-sufficient oceans unto itself, making aquariums that don’t treat their animals like royalty seem like fish bait. Brian Robison can’t believe his attendance numbers. Raking in more than a million visitors a year and gaining momentum all the time, Robison, the director since 2001, says Shark Reef is only going to grow. Since its debut on June 20, 2000, millions of Vegas tourists and local guests have toured the facility to get up close and personal with the sharks and a few of their predatory friends. Robison says it’s the human obsession with sharks and sea creatures and not the slots that bring the visitors to Shark Reef. “Sharks may look scary, but if you stick your hand in the water they usually run,” he says. “There’s so much to be learned about these animals, and that’s the thing about Shark Reef. Bringing this animal collection together; the water monitor, the golden crocodile, the piranhas, they are scary. But we can explain to you why they’re not scary.” The cast of characters is as impressive as it is intimidating. The reptiles include golden crocodiles, green sea turtles, and water monitors, which are all endangered species. Among the tropical and fresh-water fish are angelfish, pufferfish, and radiated lionfish, along with an array of venomous fish. From the very first exhibit in the 95,700-square-foot facility, visitors embark on an auditory and visual experience. Passing through the tropical jungle, the birdcalls and the warm damp air lead right to the golden crocodile, which sits half-immersed in 78-degree water (they can stay under for two hours without a breath). The yellow-jacketed hybrid is small for a croc, but it’s also one of the most ferocious reptiles in the world. Robison has seen it hundreds of times, but he still seems impressed. “If he gets a hold of you he won’t let go until he’s severed a limb,” he says with a smirk. Of the estimated 12 golden crocs left in the world, five live at Shark Reef. His feeding regimen consists of chicken with their heads, which the animal handlers offer on the end of a feeding tong to give the crocodile a more “enriching” experience. The American Zoo and Aquarium Association is emphasizing this kind of environmental enrichment, the process of providing stimulating habitats for captive animals to allow them to demonstrate their species-typical behavior and to enhance their well-being. Robison says this is important for animals in captivity because it increases their energy and activity levels. To create the ideal living situations for all the animals at Shark Reef, creators developed the animal husbandry facility first, “a building we use to quarantine the animals in our systems to prepare them for display,” Robison says. Shark Reef opened to visitors a year and three months from the time the first employee was hired to operate the husbandry building, while marine biologists and aquarium experts were developing and broadening the collection of animals, determining ways to ensure the well-being of predatory species in captivity. The whole process of designing and building the aquarium involved Dennis Thoney, formerly of the New York Aquarium, and Dr. John Nightingale, president of the Vancouver Aquarium Marine Science Centre. “They wanted sharks to be the premier exhibit. . . .The secret to a happy shark in captivity is excellence in animal husbandry and excellence in animal care from start to finish.” From the time the animals arrive at Shark Reef they’re examined for any deficiencies and given a supplemental diet as needed. The animals get a well-rounded seafood diet, much as they would encounter if they were living in the real ocean. “Just like us, we don’t want to eat the same food all the time. They’re looking for different tastes so it keeps them interested,” Robison says. Tempting sharks with the filet mignon of the sea won’t stop them from occasionally picking off a tank mate that’s lower in the pecking order or from taking a chunk out of a pesky shark. But Robison says those incidents occur at all aquariums because it’s the nature of predators to attack their prey. “It’s not that we don’t tempt the sharks with other little fish swimming around in there . . . barracudas, giant sting rays, turtles, things they would find if they were swimming around the coral reef. But if you were eating your favorite meal every day, why would you settle for less? They know they’re going to get it because they’re in captivity; they’ve been trained.” Sharks are primarily fish eaters, taking all bony fish as prey, from sedentary bottom-living rockfish, lingcod, and flatfish to fast open-ocean species such as broadbill swordfish and bluefin tuna. And although humans are not in their preferred diet, Robison says people have the false impression that sharks attack people for food. Typically any shark attack on a human being is a case of mistaken identity. Although their vision is very poor, their electric receptors are excellent so they are distinctly capable of sensing a heartbeat or water splashing above. They may sense what they think is a sea lion, but not see that it’s actually a person. In fact, The Natural History of Sharks, by Thomas Lineaweaver and Richard Backus, cites the following items recovered from shark stomachs: six hens and a rooster, 25 quart bottles of Vichy water, a reindeer, six horseshoe crabs, three bottles of beer, a blue penguin, a piece of bark from an oak tree, porpoise parts, a 100-pound loggerhead turtle, a handbag, stingrays, a spaniel, and a 25-pound lump of whale blubber and whalebone strands. Of the 44 species of sharks in the ocean, only 30 are known to have committed attacks on humans. Despite their indiscriminate ingestion Robison partially blames the shark’s poor image on the movie industry. “What do I think Hollywood has done? I think they’ve used these fantastic creatures to scare people and sell tickets.” So educating people about the true nature of sharks is an important part of Shark Reef’s mission. Erin Randel, of Mandalay Bay public relations, says few people are aware of how dire the situation is for sharks around the world. For every human killed by a shark, she says, humans kill 10 million sharks. Currently across Asia, pressure groups have been calling for a halt to the growing trade of shark fins, which they say is cruel, wasteful, and having a devastating effect on the shark population. Saline Solution The challenge of educating the public about the dwindling shark population is daunting, but Robison says from the beginning of the Shark Reef project, the most overwhelming aspect was creating an ocean in the middle of the desert. Shark Reef planners realized early on that they had to make the saltwater with just the right salinity for the fish on-site if the project was going to work. To develop natural seawater, designers initially used Red Sea salt from Israel—although now they use Salt Lake City salt as an alternative—which is a type of dehydrated seawater that, when combined with water from a local source, contains salt and other trace elements that are found in natural seawater. Underneath the facility, a complex system of treatments and filtration devices eliminates toxins from the water before it’s combined with the salt. “We take the raw salt into the brine pit and the guys introduce the salt into the pit and pump the solution with the correct salinity into the building. The ultimate goal is to recreate an atmosphere for guests and animals similar to the natural habitat,” Robison says. Nearly 2 million gallons of seawater must be filtered every two hours into the 14 exhibits. Beyond conjuring up a plan to create just the right salinity for the wide variety of sea life, Shark Reef creators had to coordinate the services of several companies, near and far, to create the necessary product. Exhibit designers BIOS:Inc., animal life support engineering designers TA Maranda Consultants, and Desert Plumbing joined Shark Reef and Mandalay Bay planners to create a close replication of natural seawater while eliminating toxins in huge volume. Although ocean salinity varies and animals are adaptive, creating just the right salinity was essential to the project because the animals won’t reproduce unless they are completely at ease in the water. “In the animal world, to reproduce they have to be not stressed,” Robison says. “People cause stress to animals. Wrong salinity causes stress to animals. Wrong temperature. Dietary needs. Everything has to be just right. At Shark Reef we’ve had rays giving birth for about a year and a half, so they were immediately comfortable and the care is obviously good.” Too many animals getting too comfortable can be a problem at Shark Reef, or any fish tank in any aquarium. But Robison says controlling the population is as simple as removing the males from an exhibit if necessary. Another option is, based on the other aquariums’ needs in the region, they may be able to supply animals to other facilities, and vice versa. “The fewer animals we harvest from the wild, the more conservation oriented the facility becomes.” Education Nation Conservation and education efforts are essential to Shark Reef because so many of the animals it houses are in peril around the world. To keep the community involved and aware, local schoolchildren are given guided tours before operating hours and taught lessons on the various species, which the Reef coordinates with the kids’ studies in school. The monstrous tanks are actually wired for sound so a diver can give instruction from under the water, showing the students different things in the classroom on-site. Students are taught about the anatomy of sharks, various reptiles, and fish, but also told about their plight for survival, which Randel says really resonates. One of the major ways Shark Reef is able to get through to the children is by teaching them about Mandy, a sea turtle sponsored by Shark Reef last year. In late 2001, Shark Reef and the Caribbean Conservation Corporation developed an alliance to follow green sea turtles by attaching a satellite transmitter to the shells of nesting females. Researchers now follow Mandy to glean information and also help conservationists protect the endangered species. Kids and other visitors are able to log on the Internet and keep up with Mandy’s journey. Other conservation efforts including their work with the American Elasmobranch Society—a nonprofit that studies living and fossil sharks, skates, rays, and chimaeras, and the promotion of education, conservation, and wise utilization of natural resources—are a major part of staff’s daily efforts. Shark Reef’s curator actually helped write the first American Elasmobranch shark husbandry manual, which Robison says is a universally important document for the treatment of sharks in captivity. Other efforts to save various sea creatures from near extinction are ongoing, along with constant upkeep of the facility, the animals, and their information. But Randel says nothing is more essential to the Shark Reef than educating the public, and especially the kids. “Think about when you were eight years old and you had one impressionable moment in your life and that just happened to come during your visit to Shark Reef. Down the road that eight-year-old becomes a marine biologist and saves some extinct or endangered species. Think about that impact.”